


what you see is what you get

by searwrites (sears)



Series: soutori au i cant seem to let go of [1]
Category: Free!
Genre: Hooking up, M/M, lets pretend we're not boyfriends, sexually experienced nitori
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 10:17:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2577935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sears/pseuds/searwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>from tumblr:</p><p>sousuke/nitori | for anon prompt: "fuck buddies who gradually become more because I do love me some cliches. Like, Ai just completely and sneakily working his way into Sousuke's life and heart, and Sousuke just not really knowing what to do with that because it wasn't part of his plan." | not sure what to warn for this, other than explicit sexual content. read the prompt and read at your own discretion | rated, 4.5k ish</p><p>----------</p>
            </blockquote>





	what you see is what you get

What isn’t surprising is where it starts - the pool, the one thing they seem to have in common, the only place Sousuke will allow himself to openly look.

What is surprising is how it happens.

It’s all so casually dropped that Sousuke thinks it’s a joke at first - his immediate impulse is to laugh. The college pool is communal, anyone can use it, and Sousuke has been going despite himself and his injury, only noticing that Ai had attended the same university when they bumped into each other here. The locker rooms are emptied out for the night, just the two of them in the echo of a tiled concrete room, and it feels so familiar - the quiet slosh of the water after hours, the only other sounds being the hum of the water heater.

Ai approaches him with his towel draped around his neck, his hair fluffed from where he’d rubbed it dry as best he could, and he leans his thin shoulders back against the locker next to Sousuke’s.

“So, I’ve been curious to know if you’re into boys or not,” Ai says, plain as day.

Sousuke turns a lifted eyebrow towards him, tries his best to look more confused than shocked.

“Um.”

“Maybe smaller boys?” Ai says, and then he pushes away from the cool metal of the lockers, holds his hands almost cutely behind his back, something like an offering. “Boys you can hold down?”

Sousuke can’t help it, and quietly curses under his breath the minute he lets himself glance down. Ai still wears these criminally small swim shorts, and he’s half-hard in them, his cock pressed sideways against his hip by damp, colorful lycra.

“Jesus, Nitori,” Sousuke huffs, laughing without smiling, looking down as Ai moves farther into his space. He hasn’t moved back though, just stands stock still while Ai approaches him like he’s a small animal prone to startling.

“What?” Ai shrugs, his face a mockery of innocence. “It’s a pretty straight forward question.”

Sousuke laughs again, lungs expunging air, glancing around like anyone could hear them in here, like anyone would even care. Ai places a palm to Sousuke’s stomach, traces the contours up his sternum with his fingers.

“What about a smaller boy who wants to be held down?” Ai asks, and there it is - his cheeks blush pink, and his breath turns a little shaky. He’s nervous.

Sousuke doesn’t think, he just acts on it. He dips his head and devours Ai’s mouth when it opens to him, grips the younger boy’s thin, almost fragile neck and licks alongside the wet warmth of his tongue. Ai immediately moans, high and needy, up on his toes in an instant to wrap an arm around Sousuke’s shoulders.

“Please tell me you have a dorm here, one without a roommate,” Sousuke rasps, his voice hoarse and his lips brushing against Ai’s, as if that’s all the space they need to breathe.

“That’s why I asked,” Ai grins, and then leaps onto Sousuke’s body, startling him enough that he has to fumble to get a grip on him. He ends up with his legs wrapped around Sousuke’s waist, Sousuke’s hands holding him up by the curve of his backside. Sousuke’s mouth waters involuntarily.

Ai turns like a light switch when they part for long enough to decide it’s time to leave, flips back to composure in a matter of seconds. Sousuke feels like he’s struggling to walk in his sweats, the clingy material of his suit suddenly suffocating against the fat swell of his cock. To make it worse, Ai sways his hips as he walks, gives Sousuke what he’s certain is some kind of a torturous show.

Ai does seem to have a roommate, but he isn’t here at the moment, for whatever reason. The minute the door clicks behind them Ai does another 180, all but tears Sousuke’s hoodie from his bare torso, tugs down his sweats.

It’s almost too much for Sousuke. Ai seems to have explicit experience with this kind of thing, knows exactly what he’s doing. He shoves Sousuke back on the lower bunk, straddles his hips. All Sousuke has the coherency to do is rub Ai’s legs, up his thighs, over his belly. He’s about to comment something dopey and stupid - along the lines of saying he’s glad Ai never developed much muscle definition, that he feels so good where he’s soft - but then Ai is lining Sousuke’s cock up behind him, his torso twisted almost elegantly.

“Fuck,” Sousuke breathes, his breath a humid exhalation of pleasure, hands squeezing the thickest part of Ai’s thighs.

Ai sinks down onto the length of him, so slick and warm, all done by himself, in his own way and on his own time. Sousuke lifts his head just enough to gape, to watch as Ai’s body sucks him in, as Ai’s palm slaps down against the expansion of Sousuke’s ribs, as he rolls his hips and fucks himself on Sousuke’s cock.

“So much for being held down,” Sousuke grunts, groaning as Ai bounces deep in his lap, sitting with his full weight and never lifting himself more than an inch or so, grinding almost.

“That comes after,” Ai says, pulling one of Sousuke’s hands away from his thighs. The way he says it - smiling all smug and flushed, baring the bright white of his teeth, his voice breathy - it makes Sousuke’s toes curl in the sheets.

Ai takes Sousuke’s hand and pours a glob of cool jelly onto it, then takes his palm and smears it down his belly until Sousuke is rubbing his dick for him. Sousuke drags his slickened hand over Ai’s cock and makes Ai’s head fall back until he’s rocking forward in something like a trance, both hands holding him up against Sousuke’s torso. He starts to do this thing where he rubs his hips in little circles, his ass so unbelievably tight, Sousuke so deep he wonders if he can feel himself through the soft cushion of Ai’s belly.

He can’t do it though. He’ll come if Ai keeps this up, and this will all be over way too soon. Instead he wrenches his hands away, smirking to himself when Ai whines, and then grabs at his bony little hips. He plants his feet on the mattress and pistons himself upwards until Ai has to press his forearm to the bottom of the top bunk mattress to keep from hitting his head against it.

“Turn me over,” Ai gasps, in between little desperate cries and moans, “On my face, please, fuck.”

The inside of Ai’s thighs are a slippery mess, and Sousuke’s wet hand isn’t helping, but he manages to get Ai maneuvered so he’s ass up and begging for it, voice muffled by the pillow as he tugs at his cock.

“Please, please-”

Sousuke slides inside him and groans so deep he wonders if Ai can feel it travel up his spine. His little body is so tight but gives so well, the pink of his hole opening up for the width of his cock, his back arching on every push. His pert little ass fits a cheek in each of Sousuke’s palms, so he squeezes them, parts them, curls his fingers around what he can reach of Ai’s hips to pull him back, fucking him as deep as possible.

When he comes he nearly blacks out, collapsing on the back of Ai, only half rolling to the side when he realizes he’s probably too heavy to lay on him like that. Ai gets even more desperate, wriggles his hips until Sousuke’s sticky and spent cock slips from his hole and then he’s tugging on Sousuke’s hand, begging him, “your fingers, fuck, please”.

Ai comes half twisted onto his back, panting up at the underside of the top bunk as he spurts his come all over his stomach, some of it reaching up towards his chest.

“Jesus, that was insane,” Sousuke says, more to himself than anything, not bothering to hide the note of awe in his tone. He doesn’t realize he’s staring at Ai until Ai turns his head and catches him looking - and his exhausted, panting mouth turns into an easy grin.

Ai seems to hold back from saying anything, from adding his own two cents, and it hits Sousuke with a flush of embarrassment that what they did was probably pretty tame, at least by Ai’s standards. Instead he rolls onto his shoulder, holds Sousuke’s jaw in his clean hand and kisses him, soft and almost invasively intimate.

“Should do it again sometime,” Ai mumbles, his cheeks gone pink again, as if he’s more ashamed of a kiss and a request for more than bouncing on your high school teammate’s dick, moaning for it.

But he’s got his legs extended, and his feet only barely reach halfway down Sousuke’s shins, even with his toes pointed, and something about the way he’s positioned - elongated, reaching like he’s found something he wants and has decided to take it - has Sousuke relaxing enough not to panic about the ramifications of what may or may not have just happened.

That’s the thing - Sousuke did like smaller boys, or even bigger ones, until he realized they could be just as clingy as girls, if not more so. Apparently lack of selection means you need to latch onto the available ones you find, or something along those lines. Sousuke has long since decided he isn’t emotionally available for a relationship. It’s too much work.

Ai leans over the edge of the bed, picks up Sousuke’s jeans and takes out his phone. Oddly enough, Sousuke doesn’t panic or get nervous about it, he only watches curiously. Ai casually turns the screen to him with a quiet grunt when it gets to the lock screen. Sousuke types in his password, and then watches Ai nibble at the fat of his lower lip as he types in his own phone number, adding himself as a contact.

He sits up afterwards, Sousuke following, groaning a little at the ache in his shoulder from holding himself up for too long, and then takes his phone once Ai hands it back to him.

“Only if you want,” Ai says, and then he gets up off the bed to get dressed.

Sousuke’s somewhat hazily fucked out brain entertains the idea that he may have just struck gold.

-

It continues because the sex is good and Ai is easy.

Not easy like he’s a cheap date and a sloppy fuck, but easy like he doesn’t ask for much in return, gets as much out of the arrangement as Sousuke seems to. Sousuke was wary at first, mostly because of how fiercely persistent Ai had been in high school, both with Rin and with swimming in general. It pains him a little to wonder if Ai hadn’t had a little bit of a crush on Rin back then, if him crying on the stairs that one night meant more than just feeling like he wasn’t good enough for the team.

It doesn’t matter now though, because when it comes to finding his own pleasure Ai seems to know exactly what he wants and in what doses. It’s at least once a week Ai meanders his way into the city, fucks Sousuke until he’s convinced his muscles have turned to jelly, and then leaves the very next morning, goes on with his life. He never texts more than a quick  _‘u busy? ;)’_ , and Sousuke almost never is.

Sousuke’s university career is more like a vague college catalogue of courses, like a 101 on how to seem like you have no actual goals in life. Ai knows he goes to the same school, but he doesn’t know that it’s only a continuing and professional education program, that he didn’t get the scholarship for a full degree. He takes maybe two classes a week, works the rest of his free time at a smoothie shop, and Ai knows absolutely none of this, and Sousuke plans to keep it that way.

What’s amusing is how Ai nearly never ends up pinned beneath him, despite it being the way he sold himself. Part of it makes Sousuke ache to wonder if he’d only done that to make himself seem more appealing, weaker, as if he’s used to men expecting that of him. Sousuke usually cuts that train of thought off before it can wander away from him, because it feels a little too similar to caring, and Sousuke can’t let that happen.

Still, he fucks like it’s an olympic sport, bouncing in Sousuke’s lap, twisting himself into knots. He can even suck his own dick if he’s half soft and lying on his back, bends himself in two - he even let Sousuke watch one night. He couldn’t finish that way, and whined when Sousuke teased him, punching weakly at his shoulder and claiming that knowing Sousuke was watching made him too hard, it doesn’t work when he’s full.

Ai’s schoolwork is much more taxing than Sousuke’s, and not only because he takes tripple the amount of classes. Sousuke convinces himself he only knows this because they go to the same campus, but it’s more than that - it’s catching the creeping hints of dark circles beneath Ai's eyes around the time of exams, it’s knowing Ai is exhausted when he passes out immediately after sex, curls himself into a cocoon, wrapped in Sousuke’s comforter.

He doesn’t talk about it much when he comes over, never says more than a half-nod and a mention of studying, and Sousuke gets infinitely frustrated with himself over this. It’s mainly because he finds himself wanting to know - wanting to ask what Ai’s been doing all week, how he’s sleeping, to tell him to go easy on himself. He always worked a thousand times harder than anyone else, and always seemed to think he wasn’t good enough, but even in high school he brought himself out of that funk. Sousuke only allows himself the smallest hint of pride at remembering that some of it was because of his help.

It’s a good arrangement they have, but a frustrating one. Bit by bit Sousuke feels himself slipping - feels the familiarity of every visit, every morning after where Ai has to stand on the very tips of his toes to reach Sousuke’s mugs in the kitchen, one of Sousuke’s gym shirts barely skimming the tops of his bare thighs - and realizes he’s going to have to deal with it soon.

Just not yet.

-

It’s happened before.

So it shouldn’t be all that alarming or disorienting, but somehow it still is, somehow it still feels like ripping a new bandaid from a fresh wound. Sousuke doesn’t hear from Ai for over a week, and it isn’t even a big deal, but Sousuke still frets over it. He keeps it all to himself, thankfully, only moderately allowing himself to wallow in disappointment when he’s at home alone, washing the sticky remnants of blended fruit from his skin beneath the spray of a hot shower, pretending his life could have amounted to more than this.

By the time two weeks have passed and Ai finally texts him it’s like Sousuke can breathe again, relief fills him like a cool gulp of water sliding down the back of your throat on a hot day, but there’s more to it than that. There’s this nervous trepidation that makes Sousuke pace the front room of his apartment while he waits for Ai’s delicate little knock on his door. He brews an entire pot of coffee and drinks about three cups of it in the span of just over half an hour.

Ai kisses him the minute they shut the door behind them, wrapping his arms around Sousuke’s neck and standing up on the balls of his feet to reach him at full height. He smells like the cool autumn air, like the stretch of earth that’s been stuck between them for maybe a little too long, and Sousuke envelopes him with the full strength of his arms, squeezing so hard he makes Ai squeak a little.

“Mm, you taste good,” Ai hums, grinning easily like nothing’s happened, licking playfully at Sousuke’s mouth.

And maybe it is easy, maybe none of this really means anything, so Sousuke squeezes his pert little tush and bites the lobe of his ear, his voice low as he says, “Bed, now”.

There’s something different about this time, Sousuke can’t quite put his finger on it. It’s in the hesitant way Ai peels his clothes off, the way he crawls into Sousuke’s lap and seems to refuse to look anywhere but Sousuke’s mouth. He keeps his hands fitted at the base of Sousuke’s neck, his fingers curved soft around his throat, breathing right into Sousuke’s mouth.

Sousuke ends up pushing himself a little too hard when Ai eventually gets up from Sousuke’s lap and lays flat out on his stomach, his thighs pushed together. He fucks into Ai whole holding his arms taut at either side of Ai’s head, and it kills his shoulder to do it this way, but he knows the tells when Ai wants it hard - the way he curves his back, sticks his ass up in the air, the way he whimpers for it.

And in the morning it’s like nothing is different, like no extra time has passed. Ai still meanders sleepily into his kitchen, microwaves the leftover dregs of Sousuke’s coffee from the night before, and then crawls back into bed holding two mugs of it. The coffee is burnt and kind of horrible, but Ai sits with his knees pulled up to his chest, nurses the coffee below a sleepy smile, and Sousuke can’t find it in himself to tell him.

“It’s just. It’s been a long week,” Ai says, unprovoked. He glances carefully at Sousuke and then focuses back on the steaming liquid in his mug.

Sousuke flushes in embarrassed heat, because he’s remembering what he did to make Ai feel the need to say this - last night, fucked out and this close to dreaming, he’d squeezed Ai’s small little shoulder, pulled him closer into the warm of his chest, until he could feel the ridges of his spine.  _“I thought I’d lost you there,”_  he’d said, and in his head he’d intended for it to come out as some kind of a joke, to poke fun at the fact that any normal person would have worried if they hadn’t heard from someone they were close with for nearly two weeks. It ended up coming out a hell of a lot more honest, his tone stripped raw by the onset of sleep.

Ai doesn’t press the issue, only drinks his coffee, pulls on his clothes, and gets ready to leave.

When Sousuke finally pulls himself away from the bed, his feet thunking with a new kind of exhaustion, he notices that there’s a somewhat fresh pot of coffee waiting for him in the kitchen - one that Ai had put on before he left.

-

Sousuke decides this time he’s going to do something a little different. It isn’t a big deal, isn’t even remotely monumental by normal people’s standards, but it feels like something new to him, so he’s nervous all the same.

Ai comes over a little earlier than expected, but it’s okay, because he’d given himself an extra two hours to prepare - he’s never been much of a proficient cook.

He’s halfway through dishing up the curried rice, frowning at its unattractive color, when he’s interrupted by that familiarly soft knock on his door.

Only when he whips it open and expects Ai to be smiling, he isn’t. In fact, he looks miserable, his face splotchy and his eyes all red. He’s been crying.

“What-”

“Can we not talk about it?” Ai says, rushing past Sousuke into his apartment.

Sousuke is barely able to spin his head back onto his shoulders, his heart pounding something fierce, when he catches Ai stopping dead in front of the table, dropping his coat clutched in his fist right to the ground where he stands.

“God, you made me dinner,” Ai says, covering his mouth with his fingers, “Fuck.”

“It’s not. We don’t have to eat, it’s fine. I made it for myself and made too much, is all.”

“No, no it’s sweet, really,” Ai says, turning and fitting himself into Sousuke’s chest, pressing his face right against the heavy beat of Sousuke’s heart as Sousuke carefully wraps his arms around his back.

He’s preparing for rejection, so ready for it he’s already thinking up excuses to try and claim he ended it first -  _I think you’re a little too distracted, I don’t know where we’re going with this, I think I’m falling for you_. Maybe not that last one.

“Everything okay?” he asks, cautious of pushing it, cupping the back of Ai’s head with his palm.

Ai laughs out something that sounds suspiciously more like a sob than genuine amusement. He pulls his head back up enough to look up at Sousuke, and shrugs in something like resignation.

“My parents have decided they don’t, um, approve of my lifestyle? I guess,” Ai says.

Sousuke’s heart plummets. He doesn’t know enough about Ai’s family to know what that means, but if anyone laid a fucking hand on him he’ll rip them apart-

He doesn’t realise he’s holding Ai’s face, scanning it for bruises, until Ai chuckles quietly and pulls his hands away, until they’re resting at his shoulders. “I’m fine,” he says, “I just got cut off.”

Sousuke lifts a brow. “Cut off?”

“Yep,” Ai says, pulling away to pick up his jacket off the ground, and then pulling his hoodie over his head, tossing them both on the couch.

“What does that mean?” Sousuke asks, because he never knew how Ai got his money, never had a chance to ask.

“Means no more allowance, means I’ll need to get a job.” He wanders around the living room, and then seems to make some sort of internal decision to sit resolutely down at the dinner table, in front of the plate Sousuke had put together for him. “Oh, and I’m homeless. They’ve cancelled my dorm payments.”

“What?” Sousuke asks, sliding down in a somewhat overwhelmed slump into the chair opposite Ai at the table, waiting for someone to peek around the corner and tell him this is all a joke.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ai says, and he digs into his food like he hasn’t eaten for days. Sousuke suddenly wishes he made more.

-

Ai doesn’t turn over when they fuck that night, stays on top of him, hunched over his torso. He presses his face into Sousuke’s cheek when he comes, pants against the corner of his mouth, streaking Sousuke’s stomach. Sousuke takes it slow from there, holds his back with an open palm as he pushes up into him, careful not to be too hard or too demanding with it.

And he’s been kidding himself if he thinks this is new. It’s been like this for weeks - wanting to make Ai feel good, wanting to make his home look desirable, presentable, cleaning up in a frantic whirlwind of panic every time Ai texts him, his toothbrush hanging out the corner of his mouth the whole time he leans down to pick up all the random piles of dirty laundry he hasn’t bothered to wash yet. It’s moving things a shelf lower in his kitchen so that Ai can reach them, it’s sleeping on the one side of his bed, even when Ai isn’t here. It’s wanting to know what’s hurting Ai so he can fix it - wanting to be the fix.

Sousuke kisses Ai when he comes, muffling the desperate sounds he makes against Ai’s mouth, gripping his sides. Once he’s through, he doesn’t move, and Ai doesn’t seem keen to either. He lays down flat on Sousuke’s chest, presses his face to the warm heat of his throat and licks at his pulse.

They don’t move for so long that Sousuke thinks they might fall asleep like this - with him soft and still inside of Ai, hands crossed over the pale skin of his back. He’s so content just to hold him there that it startles him when Ai’s voice, even as small and quiet as it is, finally speaks up.

“Ask me to stay,” he says.

Sousuke squeezes him, so wrapped up in tight relief that he does it too hard again, makes Ai squeak.

“Stay,” Sousuke murmurs, right into Ai’s ear. “But tomorrow we talk about it, okay?”

Ai hums, shifting a little so that he rolls onto his side. Sousuke takes a moment to wipe himself down and then fits himself against Ai’s back, familiar and terrifyingly honest with all that still needs to be said.

-

The talk goes a little something like this:

Ai sits in what can only be described is a tightly knit ball of anxiety on one side of Sousuke’s couch, biting at his nails.

Sousuke grabs his ankle, tugs until Ai hesitantly crawls into his lap, rests the side of his face against Sousuke’s shoulder.

Ai does his best to make it sound like he isn’t going to cry, and Sousuke doesn’t tell him it’s okay to, doesn’t patronize him enough to make those kinds of decisions for him. When Ai does cry Sousuke silently wipes the tears from his cheeks.

Sousuke asks Ai to stay, promises him he would offer even if Ai hadn’t asked him to.

Ai wipes his snotty nose on Sousuke’s sweatshirt, grinning at the face Sousuke makes.

Sousuke kisses him anyway.

-

“You know I had a crush on you in high school, right?” Ai says, his skin warm and still a little damp from the shower, pressed against the side of Sousuke’s chest.

“What about Rin?” Sousuke asks, careful to sound as casual and unassuming as possible.

Only nothing seems to get by Ai. He shoves weakly at Sousuke’s chin, grinning bashfully.

“I can like two people at once, it’s not hard.”

Sousuke lifts Ai’s hand, bites at his thin, delicate fingers.

Ai yelps and pulls his hand away, doing that thing he does when he gets ticklish, curling around Sousuke and hiding his face in his neck. He’s coming down from laughing hard, slightly out of breath, and it’s so quiet Sousuke almost doesn’t hear it.

“Not anymore, though," Ai murmurs. "Just one.”

“Yeah,” Sousuke says, carding his fingers through Ai’s hair, pulling it away from his face. “One’s enough.”


End file.
